PP 649: Make Changes With Intention with Jennifer Weaver-Breitenbecher
“Changes do not happen in your life by coincidence… Changes happen in your life because you intentionally cause a change. Be intentional and everything that you do, because it matters.” -Jennifer Weaver
Be a healthy achiever! Accomplishments bring pride and satisfaction not until it takes a toll on our health and well-being. Today, Kim and Jennifer talk about the importance of taking a break in defeating burnout. The need for wellness is becoming more urgent as the work environment greatly shifts by the passing of generations. As a psychotherapist, Jennifer has some expert advice on how to spot a good therapist. Connectivity is vital and in every change you wish to make, remember to always be intentional. Tune in and learn how to experience wellness on a bigger level!
Highlights:
01:41 Nosy For A Cause
08:39 Take A Break
16:13 Characteristics of a Good Therapist
23:23 Corporate Wellness On A Bigger Level
28:46 Shifts In The Work Place
33:54 Suitable Connectivity
39:25 Be Intentional
Resources:
Book
Think Better Live Better: A Victorious Life Begins In Your Mind by Joel Olsteen
Inspirational Quotes:
“Sometimes a lot of parents get out of prison and they feel as though they have lost their right to parent and that’s not true. Kids need their parents to parent as best as they can.” -Jennifer Weaver-Breitenbecher
“Being an overachiever can be great if you do it in a healthy way.” -Jennifer Weaver-Breitenbecher
“Sometimes when we try to be everything, it’s about who are we being that for. Because sometimes we don’t realize that we are actually just fine to everyone around us and we are afraid that we’re not.” -Jennifer Weaver-Breitenbecher
“Truly listening and actually trying to hear another person can help you understand yourself.” -Jennifer Weaver-Breitenbecher
“Don’t think about how everybody else is affecting you think about how you can affect yourself.” -Kim Sutton
“You have to decide what to do because you’re the only one who knows enough about you to know what to do.” -Jennifer Weaver-Breitenbecher
About Jennifer:
Jennifer Weaver-Breitenbecher, LMHC, CRC is the co-owner of Polaris Counselling and Consulting. She has been serving as a psychotherapist for nearly 2 decades. She worked and trained extensively in both behavior analysis and criminal & addictive thinking. Taylor is also a sought-out expert in the field of forensic psychology has been quoted in online publications and blogs, and has provided teaching and consulting on array topics in mental health, addictions, and criminality across the country. She specializes in Mood Disorders, Personality Disorders, Addictions, and General Life Adjustments.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:
Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. This is your host, Kim Sutton, and today I’m thrilled to introduce you to Jenny Weaver-Breitenbecher, who’s a psychotherapist and the owner of Polaris Counseling & Consulting. Jennifer, I’m so happy to have you here. I know that there were some delays getting you on the show, but I know I’ve learned, I mean, episode number 649, I can’t believe I’ve gotten that far, but every time there’s a delay, there’s always a reason, and the conversation is always so relevant to the day that the guest is finally able to be here with me. So anyway, where I was trying to go was thank you and I’m really looking forward to this because I know that it’s going to be relevant for whatever’s going on in my life or listeners life. I would love to hear how you got to where you are today. I mean, what prompted you? What made you want to become a psychotherapist?
Jennifer Weaver: It started young. I was in high school and I was really in love with my Psych 101 class that I took in high school. So I became a Psych major, like most Americans college students and I loved it. I was super interested in it and super obsessed with how the brain works. I am definitely a people watcher, and my loved ones will tell you I’m nosy. So I think I found an occupation that allows me to be nosy. But I started working with kids. I worked in an autism unit at the local children’s psychiatric hospital here on Rhode Island, and I thought I loved working with kids. I thought kids were my calling, but I found that I was taking a lot of that home every night. So I actually ended up taking a position in the local prisons to fill a role of a parenting specialist and eventually a substance abuse and mental health clinician as I went on through school. And I found that I really loved working with that population, and I really loved working with adults and actually didn’t enjoy working with kids all that much. It took working with adults to realize how much I felt better suited to work with adults than kids. So after a while, I opened a private practice with my business partner to specialize in psychotherapy and wellness consulting, and that’s sort of it.
Kim Sutton: Okay. I am fascinated. You said a parenting specialist?
Jennifer Weaver: Yes. So Rhode Island, go ahead.
Kim Sutton: I was so rudely interrupted you were about to say.
Jennifer Weaver: So Rhode Island has, and many of the States do a really cool program. In Rhode Island we allow some of the parents who are incarcerated to have visits with their children on the weekends so that they can continue to connect. And I was in charge at one point in running a parenting class with these parents and working with them on parenting skills while they were incarcerated. Because I think sometimes a lot of parents get out of present and they feel as though they have lost their right to parent, and that’s not true, it’s not true because kids need their parents, they need their parents to parent as best as they can.
Kim Sutton: Right. Wow. Well, thank you, thank you for what you did. I mean, I’d never been incarcerated on behalf of the kids. That’s amazing. I want to go back to what you said about taking it home with you.
Jennifer Weaver: Right.
Kim Sutton: I can imagine just the weight of working with children and the heaviness that it would come with it. I mean, I can imagine that some of that would happen from working with people of any age. So often it’s just hard to make that decision, especially when there’s income involved because people get wrapped up in the money that they’re making versus what they need to do that feels good. So how did you know that you really just needed to do that?
Jennifer Weaver: I don’t know that I knew, but I do know I had a really great supervisor at the time who knew, and I was funny so I think I didn’t really understand what occupational burnout was yet. I didn’t understand the unhealthy level at which we sometimes take our work home with us. And I was finding that when I went home I was worrying about the kids. I wasn’t really able to shut it down. Because some of the kids we work with are in less than ideal home situations, and I would worry about that at home. And I had a really great supervisor who told me she wanted my level of burnout and concerned about these kids just wasn’t sustainable. She said to me: “You’re 25, you’ve got another 35 years or so to go working. This isn’t something you can sustain and still take care of yourself.” So I was able to find that working with adults allowed me to shut that door and go home at night.
Kim Sutton: I’m nosy. I love what you said earlier about being a people watcher and being nosy because I am the same way, but podcasting serves quite well in that capacity. But how as an entrepreneur who works out of my home, it’s often hard for me to shut that door at night, right? Because I keep on thinking, Oh, I can do this for this person. Oh, I can do this for myself. Oh, I can do this. Did you find that it was really that simple of a transition to make that you could shut the door and go back to living you?
Jennifer Weaver: No. It’s practice, and the word that we use here at Polaris a lot is intentional, that a lot of the changes we make in our lives have to be incredibly intentional. And my business partner is phenomenal at reminding me that even on an airplane you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help the people around you, and she’s great at reminding me, if you are not taking care of yourself, you are no good to other people, particularly if you are in a helping capacity. And if I am not taking care of myself, if I am not sleeping, if I am not getting to the gym, if I am not spending quality time with my loved ones, then I am no good in this room to the people on my couch.
Kim Sutton: Yeah, I’ve seen that. I’ve gone to serious stages of burnout in my entrepreneurial life. The first one was in 2008, and I actually wound up in the mental hospital. I was so sleep deprived and I wasn’t taking care of a medical condition that I started hallucinating. Listeners, you’ve heard this before, no, I’m not crazy, but burnout and sleep deprivation can do crazy things to you.
Jennifer Weaver: Absolutely.
Kim Sutton: I mean, I was running an eCommerce shop and my sleep deprivation had me thinking that there were cops outside my door. Listeners, I want you to know that I was not doing anything illegal, I just want to make that clear. Some of my orders were delayed because shipments hadn’t come in yet. I mean, they were coming from China, and the people knew that they had pre-ordered the stuff, but I just got into this. Every time I saw a light go by my house, I was convinced it was cops coming from me and that’s not how I am. I got to the end of my rope, and then in 2016, just before the podcast launched, I had another period of burnout. Nothing like that, but I had enough. I would like to say that I’ve learned all my lessons, but there are still nights when I stay up way too late, but I love that your partner is essentially an accountability partner on that way. Your partner accountable in that too, or in other ways?
Jennifer Weaver: Yeah. We always say that we’re really good at catching each other’s spiraling. We always catch each other when we notice our thoughts are becoming emotional rather than logical, particularly in running a business because they don’t teach this in school. When you’re a Psych major, they teach you how to treat, they do not teach you how to pay bills and deal with employees. So it’s a really interesting thing where we have to stop ourselves and say, okay, it sounds like you’re spiraling. Why don’t we revisit this topic tomorrow? And we’re friends in the sense that we can speak to each other like that because we know that’s what it is, we know it’s about accountability, but I think it’s important to have a person in your life who calls you on your burnout. We will also say to each other, maybe you should think about taking a few days off. It sounds like maybe you need a long weekend next weekend, let me help you with your schedule so we can make that work. And I’m lucky enough that my accountability burnout specialist is my business partner and she sees me five days a week. But some of us have to be creative and who that person is for us. And sometimes it has to be a significant other, a best friend, someone you know in your life who can notice when you need a break, and more important than someone noticing we need a break, we have to be open to hearing that. It’s not about getting offended because someone tells you that you seem like you need to take some time to yourself, it’s about being grateful that someone’s able to share that with you rather than saying, no, I can do it all because you cannot do it at all.
Kim Sutton: If you had talked to me in 2016, I would have told you I can do it all.
Jennifer Weaver: Right.
Kim Sutton: I mean, and there are still things that I’ve been hearing this year and I’m thankful for the people who have opened my eyes, but there are things that I heard this year that I heard in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 that I wasn’t ready to accept yet. No, you’re wrong, I’m right. I am the queen of stubbornness, and that is not a crown that anybody in my opinion should be proud of wearing because my stubbornness gets in my way.
Jennifer Weaver: Mine too. And do it all, you just can’t do it all at the same time.
Kim Sutton: Oh, and I have tried. Have you tried that?
Jennifer Weaver: Oh, absolutely. I was an overachiever growing up and that serves you really well until you’ve grown up. Being an overachiever is great when you’re 11 and you are kicking butt at long division, and you’re on every sports team, and you’re student body president, that’s great. It’s less great when you’re an adult and you have actual responsibilities, and you need to learn that being an overachiever can be great if you do it in a healthy way. You also have to stop yourself sometimes and say, no, I can’t do that thing because I need to take care of the rest of me.
Kim Sutton: Total transparency. Listeners, I sent an email to Jennifer about 20 minutes before we started recording. And Jennifer, I’m sorry, I was on a client call, realized, Oh, my gosh, I need to send out the zoom details for today’s call. Client was just talking, talking, talking, this is not normally how I am on client calls, but I was like, Oh, my gosh, I need to get these out, and I put no personalization into the emails. There was no of my warm nature, it was copy, paste, send. So in that effort to try to do it all, I took out any of the warmth that people normally associate with me. So I’m sorry to you Jennifer, but that was a perfect example. I mean, in time that the multitasking just didn’t serve me or you, I mean, I would hate for somebody to get that you know, people, it was not an unfriendly email, it just had the details.
Jennifer Weaver: I think what’s super interesting about that is that I didn’t notice, and I think sometimes when we try to be everything, it’s about who are we being that for? Because sometimes we don’t realize that we are actually just finding everyone around us and we are afraid that we’re not.
Kim Sutton: Ooh, I love how you said you didn’t notice. So the extra paragraph wouldn’t have made it and it didn’t break it because it wasn’t in there.
Jennifer Weaver: Yeah. It didn’t break it. And when we are fearful that we are potentially not putting in 110% and causing it to break, sometimes we’re wrong. Sometimes we didn’t actually need that extra 10%, and sometimes that’s okay.
Kim Sutton: I am loving this. There was a time when I thought every single email needed to be a novel. And I was working with a corporate leadership consultant who one day asked me to send a couple emails out and I wanted to know why she was sending out six to eight different emails to the same person, but different topics. And she’s like, well, because they don’t want a novel. Give them the specific subject line, give them the sentence or the question that they need, one line, push send. And my emails instantly began to change, and I started realizing that I was getting all the answers I needed when I put them one email at a time. Now that’s not to say that I want a hundred emails in my inbox from one person, but I realized they don’t need all the details. When I need to reschedule an appointment, I don’t need to tell them that my kid was up puking all night. Oh, I have a sick kid,let’s reschedule. That’s good enough.
Jennifer Weaver: Perfect.
Kim Sutton: Yeah. Yeah. What have been some of your biggest AHA’s through this journey? Besides the burnout.
Jennifer Weaver: Yeah. I think some of my biggest AHA’s have also been that while I, during a therapy session, am supposed to be the professional in the room, it’s interesting how much you learn from being a therapist. I have read countless books and textbooks on therapeutic practices and modalities, and that’s great and well, I highly suggest any college students listening do the reading. But I have learned the most from the people on the couch, and that is not me fluffing anything up, and I genuinely mean it. Not only have I become a better therapist with each patient that I see, but I have understood myself more, I have understood my loved ones more, and it is amazing how listening to someone else, truly listening and actually trying to hear another person can help you understand yourself. And it’s amazing. I think I’m a better person for being a therapist.
Kim Sutton: That’s so fascinating because lately, especially in the last two weeks, and I don’t remember who I first heard this from, so whoever you are, I’m sorry, but focused on being interested rather than interesting, that’s been a shift for me and I can see how it would be, I mean, as the therapist, you are there to listen.
Jennifer Weaver: Right.
Kim Sutton: Yeah, I love that. And I have to tell you I’ve learned so much from being a podcast host. I’d never expected to learn so much. I’ve said over and over again that I feel like I’ve had millions of dollars of free coaching because of my guests, and it’s amazing.
Jennifer Weaver: Yeah, I agree. It’s interesting because we always, a good therapist will tell you that it is not their job to solve your problem, it is their job to help lead you to a place where you solve your own, right? A good therapist will tell you that you actually know your own answers, you just need someone to navigate that with you. And it’s interesting because as people have come to their own realizations, it’s interesting how as a therapist you have your own realizations in that moment. As you hear people leading themselves down that path and talking through it, you have these thoughts in your head where you think, Oh, that totally applies to my life and I have been overlooking that.
Kim Sutton: That would put a short pause here for the Midroll. I don’t remember when I was in high school there being a Psych class, to be totally honest, I was spending so much time in the art studios that I wasn’t really paying attention to all the general courses. And I remember that I did have to take economics senior year, and I know there was sociology, but I don’t ever remember Psych. But having grown as I have, I had never expected when I graduated high school, that was just the beginning of education. I never expected when I graduated college that I still would learn a hundred times more than I had learned in those first 22 years, and the next 10. Do you think that it should be a mandatory course for high schoolers, Psych.
Jennifer Weaver: Yeah, it wasn’t a mandatory course, I think it was an elective, and I’m glad I took it because I don’t think I knew what psychology truly meant until I took the introductory course, so it definitely opened my eyes to a career. Otherwise, I was fully set on being a ballet dancer, which I wouldn’t have made it very far because while I was a decent belly dancer, I wasn’t about to go to Juilliard. So it thankfully opened my eyes to a career that otherwise, I may not have even realized it was a possibility. But I do know a lot of schools are starting to roll out mandatory wellness classes in which they learn about mindfulness, they learn about meditation, they learned about calming themselves down when they’re experiencing anxiety so I’m not sure that psychology should necessarily be required. I definitely love that some of the schools are starting to require these self care wellness classes, because that is something, as a Western culture, we are definitely missing education.
Kim Sutton: Okay. This is the first I’m hearing about this because I’ve been talking about this over the hundreds of podcasts that I wish it had been mandatory in my school. I wish I had learned about this in my teenage years rather than having to wait until my 30’s, and now I’m 40, and I’m still learning more about mindfulness and mindset every single day. Today, I mean, my oldest two are 14 and 17, I wished that they had had it, that they didn’t have it, it’s not too late. I had an issue with my 17 year old a couple years ago, and his attitude was just poop, that’s the best way I can put it. And I actually grounded him because he was talking back and I told him, you can be ungrounded after you read this book. And I gave him, Think Better, Live Better, I think that was the title, by Joel Osteen.
Jennifer Weaver: Yup.
Kim Sutton: And he was just sitting there the whole time like wow. I was like, it’s good, yeah. He’s like, I never thought about this stuff before. It’s like, I know, it’s pretty awesome, isn’t it? And there’s so many people that I would just love to hand the book out to. But I want to start with the teenagers, Think Better, Live Better. Don’t think about how everybody else is affecting you, think about how you can affect yourself.
Jennifer Weaver: Right.
Kim Sutton: As a therapist, do you ever find, well, I’ve never been a therapist so I don’t want to assume, are you there to guide, or are you there to listen and ask the probing questions that lead your patients to the answers that they’re looking for?
Jennifer Weaver: For the most part, yeah. For the most part the job is to listen, maybe point out some themes that a client is maybe not aware of that is happening in their life, or maybe point out some patterns that they’re having in relationships or communication. But mostly it’s right to listen, and sorta probe, and some people just want us to listen, and some people just need a safe space where they can go and talk, and buy audibly stating the things that are inside of them, they often can come to those realizations on their own, they just need to say it somewhere so it becomes real. And there definitely are patients who show up and ask us to solve their problems and they will say that to us, like: “Okay, you’re the therapist, what do I do?” And I always say to them like: “I have no idea because I am not you, so all I can do is walk you through this and come up with some suggestions, but you have to decide what to do because you’re the only one who knows. You’re the only person who knows enough about you to know what to do.”
Kim Sutton: Wow, I love that answer. I build marketing funnels as my primary, well, income. And there are so many people who ask me, well, what should I do? The same as you, what should I do? I always had to turn it right back around just like you do, what feels good because I’m not going to have my clients build a product or build an offer that doesn’t feel good to them, because why would they be promoting it if it doesn’t feel good? And I can imagine that the same would be true for any of your patients. You can tell them to do something, but if it doesn’t feel good, then most likely they’re not going to do it. I would love to know how you transitioned into doing business consulting as well.
Jennifer Weaver: So my business partner and I found that wellness on a more systemic level or wellness on a corporate level was not really happening. But in turn, there’s a ton of research that shows that when your staff feels good, when they are in a place of wellness, they are more productive, they are more positive, they are more cohesive. So we started working with some local networking and found that there were some local companies we could work with in which we could go in and do wellness assessments. And what we do is we meet with your team, we talk to them about wellness, we give them some actual wellness assessments, we do a few exercises with them, this can vary anywhere from half of a morning to a few days. We then go back and write a narrative, and we come to your administration or a leadership team with, Hey, this is what we found, this is what your people are telling us, and these are what we think your best practices could be, and here’s how you can put them in play. And we’ve gotten really lucky, we started with some local networking and now we are flying out about once a month, every three weeks or so to meet with a different company somewhere in the country. And actually I was in your neck of the woods last week, we were in Indiana, and we fly out to different parts of the country, and we get to meet with different companies, and it’s actually become really cool to balance our days with psychotherapy but also do wellness on a bigger level, and rather than people coming to us in psychotherapy when they are in crisis, we’re trying to get to your people before they’re in crisis so that we can deal with it proactively.
Kim Sutton: When you say wellness at a bigger level, can you explain more? I am so intrigued.
Jennifer Weaver: It’s about taking care of yourself. It’s about helping people recognize burnout. It’s about helping people recognize burnout on their team. It’s about getting leadership and administration to recognize that taking a break for wellness, even if it’s 15 minutes every three hours to go on social media or to chat with each other, to get people to recognize how important your breaks are throughout the day. I don’t care if you don’t take an hour lunch and go to a restaurant. I do care if you get up from your desk, or you call your significant other and connect, or you go on Instagram and just see what your friends are doing. So I think sometimes when we talk about wellness, we can talk about yoga, we can talk about meditation, and some companies have certainly asked us to implement that. But we can also talk about communication languages, and how we talk to the people around us, and how we check in on the people around us, and how we take care of ourselves.
Kim Sutton: You’ve hit on so many points of why I actually did not like working in corporate. I couldn’t stand the raised eyebrows. I mean, I was literally standing at the water cooler having a conversation and one of the managers or bosses would walk and they raised an eyebrow like, what are you doing here? It’s not like I had been standing there for two hours, but those breaks were completely necessary. I was an interior architect for 10 years and there’s only so much time that you can spend staring at CAD on your computer before you’re going crazy. And one hour break for lunch in the middle of the day, that’s not enough. I mean, usually by an hour in, my eyes started crossing. So I love that, and this was a decade ago, well, they started doing ’em. They were small town Ohio and just the weight of the employees in the office was really escalating. And I think they probably started to notice it from a health insurance standpoint, how much it was costing them when their employees weren’t healthy. So they started a wellness initiative, but it was more like healthy eating and exercise, and there’s so much more. I was still working late nights and going home quickly, and I lived an hour away from where I worked at that point. So I would drive home, pick up the kids, take them home, feed them dinner, and as soon as my husband got home, I would drive back because I had more work to do.
Jennifer Weaver: Right. And think about how quickly burnout occurs in that situation. And often what we end up seeing is employees feeling invalidated and unappreciated, and turnover rates increase.
Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh, yeah. I ended up getting fired. I will attribute some of it to that burnout because I started making mistakes, and I have no problem admitting my mistakes. I had just imagined a spreadsheet, it was the interior finished schedule for a school, and I pulled all the wall colors in the wrong column, they were on the ceiling column. So it’s an elementary school and I was painting the ceilings red, yellow, blue. Those weren’t the real colors, but I just had a little bit more support and I won’t point all fingers there. Definitely mistakes made on my side too, but just a little bit more space to breathe, prevented that in a little bit more wellness care. What are some of the big shifts that you have seen as a result of the work that you’ve done? And I know you can’t talk about specific clients.
Jennifer Weaver: We’ve seen, it’s interesting because when we look at new employees coming into the workforce, when we look at Gen Z versus millennials, right? Because as much as I hate to admit it, I am a millennial because I was born after 1980, but we’ve seen Gen Z years come into the workforce understanding wellness. We see them coming into the workforce understanding that they need to take care of themselves. And I actually heard a Gen Z or in a group that I did recently tell me, she said, we’ve been labeled as lazy, but really we’ve just learned how to work differently. And she said, we’ve been forced to learn how to work differently because the economy has changed. And I thought that was really smart. Now, she might be rationalizing her behavior of herself and her cohorts, I’m not sure, but she also made a good point, and I think we definitely are seeing people learn how to work smarter and not harder. And people are recognizing, yes, there are times in my career where I am going to stay later because it is a busy couple of days or a busy week. For example, I will work late the week before Thanksgiving since we are closed Thursday and Friday, but if I work late every night for weeks and months at a time, people are recognizing that that is not effective to productivity, and that they absolutely will fail. So we’re seeing — in which people are recognizing that going home is actually more helpful than staying past a certain time. There are only so many hours in a day that you can work and truly focus and be effective. After that point, going home is important, and I think people are starting to recognize that. I think the other shift we’re seeing, and this turning the tables, but the other shift we’re seeing is there’s this trend in communicate nation called the love languages, and I’m sure, almost everyone has heard of them, but we are applying it to communication in the workplace, and we are applying it to communication in relationships. So love languages basically tell people how you need to be heard and how you like to be heard. And we can do that in the workplace too. Understanding that some people need to debrief for five minutes in the morning, while understanding that other people need to be productive and keep to themselves when it comes to socializing. Just understanding that we’re all different and we all communicate differently, and by understanding the patterns that other people have, we can actually work more cohesively.
Kim Sutton: Absolutely. I’ve only honestly become familiar with the love languages since launching the podcast, and I’m seeing the validity in so many ways. I had never even noticed the difference in the affection, the language that my husband speaks versus what I speak is huge. I want to share, I was never quite sure what generation I belong to, so haven’t really heard Gen Z before so I Googled it, that’s 1996 to 2010, for any listeners who do not know. But I found this awesome chart and I never realized that I am also a millennial. I’m 1979 so I always get right on the cusp of Gen X and millennial, but according to this chart, they say 911, Columbine, Google, social media, video games and Y2K. I mean, that’s totally where I can understand while there were things in the Gen X area that happened and I remember them, I wasn’t old enough to understand them. Like desert storm, and MTV, and the challenger disaster, I mean, I was in kindergarten when that happened. So, wow, I’m a millennial, I had no clue. What are you most excited about in the next year?
Jennifer Weaver: I’m excited, we just expanded to an additional office. We hired a handful of clinicians to hold down Homebase while we travel, and we have secured a handful of new contracts, so I’m excited to travel, and spread information, and help people again on a bigger scale, navigate their problem and come to a resolution. And I love doing it in a room full of 30 or 40 people, and I’m excited that we get to take that knowledge somewhere and try to affect people on a bigger scale.
Kim Sutton: I’m curious, with so many of our listeners being online entrepreneurs, and you’re traveling, and you have actual offices, which I totally understand the validity of this in this specialty, when you have local patients, have you thought about doing online-based therapy? Or what are the challenges that come along with that? I mean, are there licensing regulations?
Jennifer Weaver: Yes. So we do online life coaching. Life coaching takes away symptom diagnostics and providing a diagnosis, which is something we normally would do in the treatment room. But right now, the psychotherapy license for most States who are not supposed to diagnose over state lines. But we have found that a lot of people really love life coaching. We connect with people over Skype or Zoom, and we say, all right, what are your goals? What are your goals for the next 30 days? What are your goals for the next six months? How do you and I work together to achieve those goals? And what we’re finding is that there’s an entire culture and generation of individuals that absolutely want that. They want to connect virtually, they want to see your face, but they want to be able to do it from their couch because they are working from home, or they have kids at home and they don’t have the additional 30 minutes of travel time in either direction. So we are branching out to that, into that, and that actually happened to this year. And we’re finding that a lot of people, we weren’t sure how it would market, but we’re actually finding that a lot of people really love it, particularly professionals who, like I said, work from home or travel for a living, they can connect with us from their hotel rooms. And we’ve been connecting with a lot of college students and graduate students who maybe have established a connection with us but then can travel with us at the same time.
Kim Sutton: I am absolutely loving that. I mean, I’m in a small town in Ohio where unless I hit every single red light, there’s nothing in my town that I can’t get to in five minutes. And I can relate to needing and loving connectivity, and having the coaches that I can access and get support from virtually. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve been looking for a bookkeeper, accountant, let me try that again. accountant for two years. And I kept on going back to some people who were cross country and it just never worked out. But I was having a meeting with somebody last week who was across the country and she doesn’t like Ohio accounting. I’m just going to make this really quick. We have city taxes, school taxes, state taxes and federal taxes. So it poses a whole other level of accounting mess for people who don’t work in the state. But she ended up introducing me to an accountant in my own town, who I didn’t even know was here. I’ve passed his office hundreds of times, thousands of times, probably. And he says, let’s set up a time to meet, and the first thing I do is look at my calendar and think, Oh, I can squeeze him in on a Zoom call in between this call and this call. I’m like, what are you doing Kim? He’s in your town, open up your door, step out and go in this online space. I love how I can do so much online but we have to remind ourselves to also get out.
Jennifer Weaver: Right, absolutely. It’s interesting because we’ll always tell people, with life coaching, I can absolutely help you set goals, but there is a time where for some people it will reach a space that is more suited in office therapy that needs the safety of the therapeutic room and that’s when we will do exactly what this woman did for you. We will find you someone local who can provide that for you. When we feel like what you need is really to sit in front of a computer for 30 to 45 minutes to actually connect with another human being in a room.
Kim Sutton: Yeah. I have so many friends who are entrepreneurs in Southern California and they’re like: “Oh, Kim, you should move out here.” I’m like: “Well, I really like my costs of living in Ohio. I’ll just fly out there and go to these meetings.” But I have to say that’s one thing that a lot, and I’m not saying it’s not around here. I’ve become so comfortable. I am totally admitting that I’m a hermit putting it out there, but it’s just a different feel around here. But I love your goals, so awesome. Where can listeners find you online, Jennifer, connect and get to know more about you, and your business, and the programs that you’re offering?
Jennifer Weaver: Well, I’m probably the most active on Instagram, my Instagram handle is jlweaverllc. You also can email me @jlweaverllc@gmail.com, or you can visit the practices website at www.polarisri.com, and that’s R-I as in Rhode Island.
Kim Sutton: I need to tell listeners that Instagram is actually how you and I met.
Jennifer Weaver: Right.
Kim Sutton: Yeah. Listeners, I created a lookbook earlier this year, I’ll put a link into the show notes, although it’s not really on topic, but I notice an ink consistency with branding with so many of the entrepreneurs that I was working with, and I wanted to show them, this is what can happen when you just really become clear on what you do and how you present it to the world. And Jennifer’s profile was one that I came across, well, I was about to say thank you for allowing me to feature you in the lookbook, but I guess I started to put you in before asking you, if it was okay. So I’m sorry but not sorry at the same time because thank you for, I mean, from within your office around the world and within lookbook, you’re inspiring people, so thank you. Do you have a parting piece of advice that you can share with the listeners?
Jennifer Weaver: Yeah, something I share with everybody, whether you’re a life coaching client, a corporate client, you’re on my couch, you are a friend of mine, ‘Be intentional. Changes do not happen in your life by coincidence. And if they do, they are certainly not sustainable. Changes happen in your life because you intentionally cause a change. You make a change in yourself, you make a change in your environment, you make a change in your job or your social circle. Be intentional in everything that you do because it matters.’
